It
is fairly common knowledge these days that the history of science can
be viewed as a series of paradigm shifts or “scientific revolutions”
in which each world view is toppled by (or superceded by) the next.
Thomas Kuhn, in particular, popularized this view in his well-known
book, The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

Newtonian
physics —
pre-twentieth century physics —
covered a lot of the data of ordinary experience (at least the physical
aspects of it). What is perhaps of most interest to our present discussion
is this: the few and rather “esoteric” facts that Newtonian physics
could not account for —
such as a very tiny, but real, and unexplained deviation in the orbit
of Mercury around the sun, from what Newtonian physics alone would predict
that orbit to be —
are what eventually led to the toppling of that theory. When Einstein
developed his theory of general relativity in 1915, one of the first
things he did was to check what his theory predicted for the orbit of
Mercury around the sun. To his delight, he discovered there was an exact
match between general relativity’s predictions and the actual observed
measurements.

Nearly
every great advance in science arises from a crisis in the old
theory, through an endeavor to find a way out of the difficulties
created. We must examine old ideas, old theories, although they
belong to the past, for this is the only way to understand the
importance of the new ones and the extent of their validity.

Challenging
the foundations of physics, researchers at the renowned Brookhaven
National Laboratory said yesterday they had found a possible flaw
in the reigning theory of how the universe works.

Using
a stunningly precise magnetic field and some of the world's most
accurate measuring equipment, the physicists showed that a subatomic
particle called a muon behaved differently than expected under
what is called ''the Standard Model.'' The Standard Model has
become a kind of scientific gospel, explaining how all matter
and energy interact, forming the basis of modern physics, and,
to some degree, all of the physical sciences. Until yesterday's
announcement, the Standard Model had withstood three decades of
challenge.

“People
have been looking for holes in the Standard Model since it was
invented,” said Lee Roberts, a physicist at Boston University
who has been involved with the muon project since 1984 and is
a spokesman for the experiment. “This is the first signal that
there might be something beyond.”

The
work is the result of a cooperative venture of approximately 80
physicists from around the world, and the results have been submitted
to the journal, Physics Review Letters. If the findings withstand
the intense worldwide scrutiny sure to come, they would mark the
beginning of 21st century physics, when speculative theories with
names like “supersymmetry” and “string theory” can be tested in
the lab.

“I
find this very exciting,” said Gerald Gabrielse, chairman of Harvard's
physics department and a specialist in high-energy physics. “The
hope is that now we will be able to move to a deeper level of
understanding for the ways that particles are arranged and behave.”

Because
this is the way coming paradigm shifts are presaged, it is worth taking
a close look at those aspects of our experience that mainstream scientific
materialism has not yet adequately accounted for. These include two
fundamental facts of our existence: